“Taggi?”
The shove against him was almost enough to pin him once more to the wall, a painful crush on his aching ribs, as the wolverine responded to his name. That second nudge from the other side must be Togi’s bid for attention.
But what had happened? Thorvald had hurled him back just after that shadow had swung over the ledge. That shadow! Shann’s wits quickened as he tried to make sense of what he could remember. A Throg ship! Then that fiery lash which had cut after them could only have resulted from one of those energy bolts such as had wiped out the others of his kind at the camp. But he was still alive — !
“Thorvald?” He called through his personal darkness. When there was no answer, Shann called again, more urgently. Then he hunched forward on his hands and knees, pushing Taggi gently aside, running his hands over projecting rocks, uneven flooring.
His fingers touched what could only be cloth, before they met the warmth of flesh. And he half threw himself against the supine body of the Survey officer, groping awkwardly for heartbeat, for some sign that the other was still living.
“What — ?” The one word came thickly, but Shann gave something close to a sob of relief as he caught the faint mutter. He squatted back on his heels, pressed his forearm against his aching eyes in a kind of fierce will to see.
Perhaps that pressure did relieve some of the blackout, for when he blinked again, the complete dark and the fiery trails had faded to gray, and he was sure he saw dimly a source of light to his left.
The Throg ship had fired upon them. But the aliens could not have used the full force of their weapon or neither of the Terrans would still be alive. Which meant, Shann’s thoughts began to make sense—sense which brought apprehension—the Throgs probably intended to disable rather than kill. They wanted prisoners, just as Thorvald had warned.
How long did the Terrans have before the aliens would come to collect them? There was no fit landing place hereabouts for their flyer. The beetle-heads would have to set down at the edge of the desert land and climb the mountains on foot. And the Throgs were not good at that. So, the fugitives still had a measure of time.
Time to do what? The country itself held them securely captive. That drop to the southwest was one barrier. To retreat eastward would mean running straight into the hands of the hunters. To descend again to the river, their raft gone, was worse than useless. There was only this side pocket in which they sheltered. And once the Throgs arrived, they could scoop the Terrans out at their leisure, perhaps while stunned by a controlling energy beam.
“Taggi? Togi?” Shann was suddenly aware that he had not heard the wolverines for some time.
He was answered by a weirdly muffled call—from the south! Had the animals found a new exit? Was this niche more than just a niche? A cave of some length, or even a passage running back into the interior of the peaks? With that faint hope spurring him, Shann bent again over Thorvald, not able to make out the other’s huddled form. Then he drew the torch from the inner loop of his coat and pressed the lowest stud.
His eyes smarted in answer to that light, watered until tears patterned the grime and dust on his cheeks. But he could make out what lay before them, a hole leading into the cliff face, the hole which might furnish the door to escape.
The Survey officer moved, levering himself up, his eyes screwed tightly shut.
“Lantee?”
“Here. And there’s a tunnel—right behind you. The wolverines went that way . . . “
To his surprise there was a thin ghost of a smile on Thorvald’s usually straight-lipped mouth. “And we’d better be away before visitors arrive?”
So he, too, must have thought his way through the sequence of past action to the same conclusion concerning the Throg movements.
“Can you see, Lantee?” The question was painfully casual, but a note in it, almost a reaching for reassurance, cut for the first time through the wall which had stood between them from their chance meeting by the wrecked ship.
“Better now. I couldn’t when I first came to,” Shann answered quickly.
Thorvald opened his eyes, but Shann guessed that he was as blind as he himself had been. He caught at the officer’s nearer hand, drawing it to rest on his own belt.
“Grab hold!” Shann was giving the orders now. “By the look of that opening we had better try crawling. I’ve a torch on at low—“
“Good enough.” The other’s fingers fumbled on the band about Shann’s slim waist until they gripped tight at his back. He started on into the opening, drawing Thorvald by that hold with him.
Luckily, they did not have to crawl far, for shortly past the entrance the fault or vein they were following became a passage high enough for even the tall Thorvald to travel without stooping. And then only a little later he released his hold on Shann, reporting he could now see well enough to manage on his own.
The torch beam caught on a wall and awoke from there a glitter which hurt their eyes—a green-gold cluster of crystals. Several feet on, there was another flash of embedded crystals. Those might promise priceless wealth, but neither Terran paused to examine them more closely or touch their surfaces. From time to time Shann whistled. And always he was answered by the wolverines, their calls coming from ahead. So the men continued to hope that they were not walking into a trap from which the Throgs could extract them.
“Snap off your torch a moment!” Thorvald ordered.
Shann obeyed. The subdued light vanished. Yet there was still light to be seen—ahead and above.
“Front door,” Thorvald observed. “How do we get up?”
The torch showed them that, a narrow ladder of ledges branching off when the passage they followed took a turn to the left and east. Afterward Shann remembered that climb with wonder that they had actually made it, though their advance had been slow, passing the torch from one to another to make sure of their footing.
Shann was top man when a last spurt of effort enabled him to draw himself out into the open, his hands raw, his nails broken and torn. He sat there, stupefied with his own weariness, to stare about.
Thorvald called impatiently, and Shann reached for the torch to hold it for the officer. Then Thorvald crawled out; he, too, looked around in dull surprise.
On either side, peaks cut high into the amber of the sky. But this bowl in which the men had found refuge was rich in growing things. Though the trees were stunted, the grass grew almost as high here as it did on the meadows of the lowlands. Quartering the pocket valley, galloped the wolverines, expressing in that wild activity their delight in this freedom.
“Good campsite.”
Thorvald shook his head. “We can’t stay here.”
And, to underline that gloomy prophecy, there issued from that hole through which they had just come, muffled and broken, but still threatening, the howl of the Throgs’ hound.
The Survey officer caught the torch from Shann’s hold and knelt to flash it into the interior of the passage. As the beam slowly circled that opening, he held out his other arm, measuring the size of the aperture.
“When that things gets on a hot scent”—he snapped off the beam—“the beetle-heads won’t be able to control it. There will be no reason for them to attempt to. Those hounds obey their first orders: kill or capture. And I think this one operates on ‘capture.’ So they’ll loose it to run ahead of their party.”
“And we move to knock it out?” Shann relied now on the other’s experience.
Thorvald rose. “It would need a blaster on full power to finish off a hound. No, we can’t kill it. But we can make it a doorkeeper to our advantage.” He trotted down into the valley, Shann beside him without understanding in the least, but aware that Thorvald did have some plan. The officer bent, searched the ground, and began to pull from under the loose surface dirt one of those nets of tough vines which they had used for cords. He thrust a double handful of this hasty harvest into Shann’s hold with a single curt order: “Twist these together and make as thick a rope as you can!”
Shann twisted, discovering to his pleased surprise that under pressure the vines exuded a sticky purple sap which not only coated his hands, but also acted as an adhesive for the vines themselves so that his task was not nearly as formidable as it had first seemed. With his force ax Thorvald cut down two of the stunted pine trees and stripped them of branches, wedging the poles into the rocks about the entrance of the hole.